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The impact of immigrant business ownership on international trade

Understanding the impact of immigrants on international trade is particularly important for Canada, as it is a small open economy with a relatively large immigrant population. This paper empirically investigates the effect of immigrant business ownership on international trade in Canada using a newly developed firm-level database with detailed business ownership and trade information. The new data make it possible to better distinguish between the effect immigrants have on reducing information costs and on product demand, and to assess the impact of immigrant business ownership on the extensive and intensive margins of international trade. The results show that although the effect of immigrant business ownership on international trade with all partner regions is either insignificant or small on average, immigrant-owned firms have a positive and significant effect on Canada's trade with the regions of origin of immigrant owners. Compared with Canadian-owned firms, immigrant-owned firms in the manufacturing sector have, on average, a higher probability of importing from (by 6.7 percentage points) and exporting to (by 2.1 percentage points) the immigrant owners' regions of origin, ceteris paribus. Also, conditional on being importers or exporters, immigrant-owned firms have stronger trade connections with the regions of origin of immigrant owners--as measured by a larger number of products and average value per product imported or exported--than their Canadian-owned counterparts. The impact of immigrant business ownership is even larger in the wholesale trade sector, highlighting the role of immigrants as trade intermediaries. Immigrant owners admitted through the business, skilled labour or provincial nominee classes, and owners with a higher level of education upon arrival, are more likely to have a greater impact on international trade than other immigrant owners.
Reference

G20 leaders' declaration: Building consensus for fair and sustainable development

The report highlights declarations form the 2018 G20 meeting focused on the following pillars: the future of work, infrastructure for development, a sustainable food future and a gender mainstreaming strategy across the G20 agenda
Reference

Technology at work v2.0: The future is not what it used to be

26 January 2016 View CITI GPS Report Technology at Work v2.0: The Future Is Not What It Used to Be, produced by the Oxford Martin School and Citi, provides in-depth analysis of the vulnerabilities of countries and cities to job automation, explores what automation will mean for traditional models of economic growth, and considers how governments can prepare for the potentially disruptive impacts of job automation on society. It builds on 2013 research by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne which found that 47 per cent of US jobs were at risk of automation over the next two decades, and on the first Technology at Work Citi GPS report, published in 2015. As well as collaborating on the Citi GPS series of reports, the School has partnered with Citi to create a new programme of research, the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment, to investigate the implications of a rapidly changing technological landscape for economies and societies.
Reference

Earnings of postsecondary graduates by detailed field of study

This Economic Insights article documents age‘adjusted mean earnings by detailed field of study among 25‘ to 54‘year‘old university and college graduates who worked full year, full time in 2010. The data are drawn from the 2011 National Household Survey. The results suggest that management sciences and quantitative methods graduates were the top earners among male and female bachelor's degree holders in 2010. The study also finds that earnings vary considerably among graduates from specific fields of study that are typically grouped together (e.g. economics graduates earn more than graduates from other social science programs, such as sociology and psychology).
Reference

Over-education and life satisfaction among immigrant and non-immigrant workers in Canada

The increased migration of skilled workers globally has led to a focus in the immigration literature on the economic costs of unsuccessful labour market integration. Less attention has been given to the consequences of employment difficulties, such as those related to over-education, on aspects of immigrants' subjective well-being. Although a large proportion of immigrants experience over-education, studies examining the relationship between over-education and life satisfaction tend to concentrate on the general population. These studies find a negative relationship between over-education and life satisfaction. Since immigrant and Canadian-born (non-immigrant) workers may experience over-education differently, it is important to examine this relationship in both groups. This study examines how over-education is associated with life satisfaction among university-educated immigrant and non-immigrant workers in Canada, and accounts for differences in the degree of over-education in each group. Results indicate that overeducation was negatively associated with life satisfaction among immigrants and non-immigrants, although the effect was weaker in the immigrant population. Income was the main factor mediating the negative relationship between over-education and life satisfaction among immigrants. Furthermore, this relationship weakened with immigrants' increased residence in Canada. This may suggest that over-education is less influential in immigrants' assessment of life satisfaction over time, or the effect of over-education is weaker among earlier arrival cohorts. Results also indicated that the negative relationship between over-education and life satisfaction was weaker for immigrants from developing countries compared with those from developed countries.
Reference

Fixing the migrant mismatch: What happens when firms value immigrants differently than governments?

Immigrant doctors driving Uber, engineers serving as baristas and researchers cleaning offices all represent a fundamental mismatch between national immigrant policy, which determines who is sufficiently valued by the nation to be admitted into the country, and the degree to which a nation's employers also value those same immigrants' skills. Nations whose firms restrict career success among recent immigrants can expect that eventually people will act on their anger, provoking social unrest, protests, riots or worse (Algan, Dustmann, Glitz, & Manning, 2010). This project is an attempt to answer two questions: (1) Why does a mismatch exist between the implied value of recent immigrants by national immigration policy and that implied by firm-level practices? (2) What can be done to fix it?
Reference

Impact of Quebec's universal low fee childcare program on female labour force participants, domestic income, and government budgets

An examination of trends in child care services and female labor force participation in Quebec and Canada, a review of research on the relationship of Quebec's universal, low-fee child care program to maternal employment, and an estimation of the relationship of the program to provincial gross domestic product and government finances
Reference

Measuring critical-thinking skills of postsecondary students

The skills -- or competencies -- that individuals develop play a fundamental role in determining their labour market opportunities and more generally their life chances. At a broader level, the development of skills is critical to economic prosperity, social progress and overall quality of life in Canada. While skills can be developed throughout an individual's life, the role of postsecondary education (PSE) in the development of these skills is of significant interest to skills stakeholders such as government agencies, corporations and PSE institutions. The relevant questions are: Which skills are of value in the labour market and to other life outcomes? Which of these skills can be developed or improved in PSE and how? In this context, the Postsecondary and Workplace Skills (PAWS) project was created as a collaborative partnership involving a large Ontario college, a large Ontario university, the Education Policy Research Initiative (EPRI) and the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), with additional funding and support from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC). PAWS focuses on one particular set of skills, namely those related to critical thinking. The goals of the project are to: 1. Measure and compare entering and graduating students' critical-thinking levels. 2. Identify the relationships between critical-thinking scores and a range of student and program characteristics. 3. Identify the value of critical-thinking skills in the labour market. This report addresses the first two questions. The second phase of the project will involve relating criticalthinking skill levels to labour market outcomes by linking the data gathered for the project to tax data held by Statistics Canada. The results of the second analysis will be presented in a subsequent report. To measure critical thinking, PAWS uses the HEIghten Critical Thinking assessment -- a 45-minute online test developed by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to measure the analytic and synthetic skills of college and university students. During the 2016-2017 academic year, the HEIghten assessment was administered to a selection of students in the entering and graduating classes at each institution.
Reference

The impact of aging on labour market participation rates

Since 2007—prior to the economic downturn of 2008/2009—the overall labour force participation of Canadians declined by about two percentage points. The first part of the study investigates the extent to which aging affected changes in labour market participation rates since 2007, based on data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). In the second part, the reasons behind the increase in the participation rates of Canadians aged 55 and over, which have been trending upwards since 1996, are explored. 1. In 2016, individuals aged 55 and over accounted for 36% of the working-age population, the highest proportion on record (since the compilation of comparable statistics in 1976). By 2026, that proportion could reach 40%. 2. Because labour market participation starts to decline after age 55, population aging was the main factor behind the decline in the overall participation rate in the years following the recession. 3. At the same time, the labour market participation of older Canadians increased. From 1996 to 2016, the labour force participation rate of individuals aged 55 and over increased from 24% to 38%, reaching a record high in 2016. 4. The participation rate of individuals aged 55 and over increased for all levels of education. For instance, the participation rate of those with a high school diploma or less increased from 19% in 1996 to 29% in 2016. 5. Changes in age, family structure and educational factors explained 44% of the increase in the labour market participation of older Canadians from 1996 to 2016.